The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is Hanna Diyab's remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights.
Diyab, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyab and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Hanna Diyab met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyab, including "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyab at Louis XIV's Royal Library, Diyab returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences.
Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.
An English-only edition.

About the Author

Paulo Lemos Horta (Afterword by)
Paulo Lemos Horta is Associate Professor of Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi. A writer, translator, and literary historian, his writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights.
Hanna Diyab (Author)
Hanna Diyab (b. ca. 1687) was a Syrian traveler originally from Aleppo. He is best known for his contributions to Antoine Galland's translation of the Thousand and One Nights.

Yasmine Seale (Foreword by)
Yasmine Seale translates from Arabic and French. Her essays on books and art have appeared in Harper's, The Nation, TLS, and elsewhere. She is the translator of The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights and Aladdin: A New Translation.
Johannes Stephan (Introducer)
Johannes Stephan is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project Kalilah and Dimnah-AnonymClassic at the Freie Universitat Berlin. He studied Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in Halle an der Saale, Damascus, and Bern.
Elias Muhanna (Translator)
Elias Muhanna is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the author of The World in a Book: al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition and translator of Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri's fourteenth-century Arabic compendium The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, which was chosen as a "Best Book of 2016" by NPR and The Guardian, and editor of The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies.

Reviews
"Diyab's memoir of his Mediterranean adventures is a mixture of clear-eyed observation and wide-eyed innocence, nicely captured by Muhanna's lucid yet folksy English version...Throughout The Book of Travels, realistic details are suffused with a sense of the marvelous." * New York Review of Books *
"It is a joy to celebrate [Hanna Diyab's] work in Elias Muhanna's vibrant translation." * Middle East Eye *



Book Information
ISBN 9781479820016
Author Hanna Diyab
Format Paperback
Page Count 468
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press
Weight(grams) 540g